AT&T’s moral obligation: If you throttle it, help us count it

Back in 2008, when cable Internet provider Comcast said it would start capping customers’ data usage at 250 gigabytes a month, it provided no way for users to know if they had hit that ceiling. This was clearly unfair, and I wrote a blog post titledComcast’s moral obligation: If you cap it, help us count it.

Comcast eventually did the right thing, providing a usage meter that clearly shows how much data users are devouring.

Now, AT&T faces a similar moral dilemma, but with a twist.

In October, the telco started throttling the data speeds for customers who retained its no-longer-offered unlimited data plan, but AT&T has not been specific about what exactly triggers the slowdown in speed. It says that unlimited-plan customers who are in the “top 5 percent” of data users will find their speeds throttled. That 5 percent is a moving target, varying based on region and month.

As I wrote on Monday, some AT&T customers in Houston and around the country are finding themselves throttled after using just 2.1 GB of data. Just a few months ago, the top-5-percent cutoff hit some folks locally at 10 GB. This lower cutoff is being reported just a couple of weeks after AT&T changed the plans it offers new customers, with at 3-GB-for-$30 plan replacing the previous top tier of 2 GB for $25.

Seeking clarity, I asked AT&T on Monday morning what the current threshold was, and if this shift was an attempt to pressure grandfathered unlimited customers into moving to the limited, 3-GB plan for the same price. Unfortunately, clarity was not what I got.

Late last night, I received a boilerplate response from AT&T that essentially reiterates the current policy without providing specifics. I updated Monday’s post with it, but here’s what a spokesperson sent me, in case you missed it:

As we said last summer, smartphone customers with unlimited data plans may experience reduced speeds once their usage puts them in the top five percent of our heaviest data users. We will continue to send reminders and communicate with these customers ahead of time as their usage approaches the top 5 percent. For 95 percent of our smartphone customers this continues to present no impact.

Sorry, AT&T, but that just doesn’t cut it.

Although AT&T won’t say how many unlimited customers it retains, it’s bound to be a large number. It was the company’s top-tier smartphone plan, and was particularly popular among buyers of the iPhone 3G and 3GS handsets. Many customers, including myself, opted to hold onto that plan, even when upgrading to newer smartphones. This issue affects a lot of people.

Certainly, AT&T has the right to manage the data usage on its network. The company clearly got in over its head when it became the exclusive seller of the iPhone, which infamously overloaded its data network. AT&T has expanded its infrastructure, but that’s not enough, as data usage explodes faster than it can build out more pipes. Thus, steps must be taken to curb demand. That’s logical, and I get that.

However, in order for customers to take action themselves to prevent being managed, they need the right information, and AT&T is not providing it. Without transparency, it appears that AT&T is pressuring users in an almost passive-aggressive manner to move to a tiered plan. It’s very hard to believe that the new 5 percent threshold is as low as 2.1 GB, particularly when that’s just a smidgeon over the old limit of the previous top-tier plan.

There’s also a serious fairness issue here. Now that AT&T’s top plan is 3 GB for the same $30 that unlimited customers pay, why should the throttling threshold be lower than 3 GB? At the very least, people who pay $30 should get 3 GB of data at AT&T’s full speed.

Here’s what I think AT&T should be doing:

• Tell unlimited customers what the current 5-percent threshold is, in real time. This could easily be done with a Web page tailored to each market, or an update to its myAT&T smartphone app. Clearly, AT&T has the internal data to set rolling thresholds – share that information with customers.

• Instead of basing throttling levels at a simple 5 percent, give it a floor based on the 3-GB plan. In other words, throttling for unlimited users could begin at 3 GB or 5 percent in any given market per month, whichever is lower higher. If average usage in Houston sets the top 5 percent at 2.5 GB, throttling wouldn’t kick in until a user goes over 3 GB. But again, if AT&T must do this, show us the current usage rates.

• Another option – just kill off the grandfathered accounts and be done with it. As I said earlier, this seems passive-aggressive. Man up, AT&T, and put the wounded horse out of its misery if you just can’t bring yourself to show us the numbers.

This kind of nonsense is the type of thing that attracts the eye of the Federal Communications Commission, which clearly isn’t AT&T’s BFF at the moment. If the company doesn’t do the right thing soon, I wouldn’t be surprised if the feds don’t come calling.

There’s no question that the era of unlimited data usage offered by both wireless and wired Internet providers is going away. Bandwidth is finite – that’s a harsh reality. But there’s a wrong way and a right way to manage that bandwidth, and unfortunately AT&T’s choosing the former.